Keep Your Nightstand Tidy With This Easy DIY Charging Station

One surefire way to ensure you don't spend your day fighting to keep your phone charged is to give it a good charge overnight. Since many of us use our phones as alarm clocks, that means having the phone in the bedroom, probably on a nightstand, next to the bed. But if you're hoping to keep your nightstand space more tidy, this DIY charging station can help you toward that organizational goal. What's more, the hack repurposes a plastic bottle, giving the plastic new life and keeping it out of the landfill.

This DIY project from eHow crafts a stylish charging station that's inexpensive and out of the way; it hangs on the wall. In addition to the plastic bottle, it doesn't require a lot more materials or tools. In fact, you likely have everything you need already in the home. You'll need a plastic bottle (a little bigger than your device), some fabric, white glue, a wall hook, scissors, and a precision knife. Given the drying period (for the glue), the entire DIY takes less than a day.

To make your own DIY charging station, the steps are simple. Start by cutting the bottle to the desired shape (think: phone cradle), then make a square cutout at the top (for the wall hook). Cover the bottle's outside with glue and add some fabric. Let it dry overnight and then cut away the fabric (including the square cutout), according to the bottle's new shape. Add your wall hook near an outlet above your nightstand, and hang your new DIY charging station for convenient, out-of-the-way phone charging.

Now that you have the gist of the DIY, you can customize it however you like. For example, there's no reason it has to be sized for only your phone. If you need a place for a second phone, a tablet, or anything else that needs overnight charging, just find a bigger, appropriately shaped plastic container and give it the same treatment. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a repurposed bottle; the same trick will work with any simple plastic bin. If you have the skills, you could even upcycle a wine bottle!

Of course, you also don't have to use fabric. You can use paint instead, a piece of self-adhesive wallpaper, cardstock, etc. Also, in the eHow tutorial, the cutout at the top is square; the DIYer used the charging brick as a template. But you can make your hole a lot smaller and any shape; it just needs to be big enough to hang from your choice of wall hook.